2012 Teaching Tolerance Award Winners

Teaching videos of the five winners is at the link here. http://www.tolerance.org/blog/2012-teaching-tolerance-award-winners

Every year, Teaching Tolerance
hears from teachers who are going the extra mile to support students
from diverse racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. These teachers
deserve to be recognized—which is why we created the Teaching Tolerance
Award for Excellence in Culturally Responsive Teaching.
On Jan. 25, this year’s five winners will receive their awards—and
$1000 apiece—at a special ceremony in Washington, D.C. And you can
watch! Edweek Teacher will livestream the event starting at 2p.m. EST. Click here to get all the details.
The winners of the 2012 Teaching Tolerance Award are as diverse as
their schools and students, but all of them reach out to families and
value home culture. All of them see students as individuals with
valuable lived-experiences. And all of them empower their students to be
successful members of our diverse society.
Our congratulations go out to this year’s winners!Robert P. Sautter
Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School (Kindergarten), San Francisco, Calif.
Sautter
believes he has achieved the highest success when a student develops a
strong sense of self-efficacy. “Creating a bond of trust is key in
building relationships with my students of diverse backgrounds,” says
Sautter. He begins each school day with a “community circle” in which
students greet each other using their home languages and implements a
partnership plan with parents so they can share their goals for their
children. “When I am shown the family photos, I listen attentively to
the stories told,” says Sautter. “When I am offered dinner, I accept and
participate in family customs—and I learn.”

Anna E. Baldwin
Arlee High School, Arlee, Mont.
Baldwin
teaches English, composition and speech, and multicultural literature
on the Flathead Indian Reservation. About 70 percent of her students are
of tribal descent, but she never makes generalizations about her
students’ backgrounds. “Culture emanates from more than ethnicity,” says
Baldwin. “There is teen culture, home culture, as well as traditional
culture.
So, I use [texts] that appeal to students’ interests, backgrounds and
abilities.” Her hope is that through “earnest discussion about things
that matter, provocative assignments and texts, and supportive and
honest relationships, students will leave [the] classroom with a better
sense of themselves, their world and their place in it.”

Laurence Tan
122nd Street Elementary School (5th Grade), Los Angeles, Calif.
Five
pillars of learning inform Tan’s teaching—engage, educate, experience,
empower and enact. He values each student’s identity and celebrates
diversity, even asking families to share their expertise with students
through mini-lessons. At the end of the year he hosts a parent
appreciation night where he and his students acknowledge the important
role families play in their children’s educational success. Tan says his
students succeed academically—and he accomplishes this by using a
social justice curriculum. “The development of youth into socially
critical and responsible individuals is of the highest importance,” says
Tan.

Lhisa R. Almashy
Park Vista High School, Lake Worth, Fla.
“Teaching
is the best profession,” says Almashy. “Because our ‘products’ are
human beings and we can be part of the vast resources they bring with
them.” Almashy teaches ESL to 9th, 10th and 12th graders. Her key to
success with English language learners is to teach them to integrate
their home and school lives by taking the best from both cultures. “I
learn about my students’ values and experiences from their homes and
communities by being
involved not only in their education, but in their lives.” Through
celebrating her students’ lived experiences, she steps beyond the
stereotypes and generalizations to understand each individual student.

Darnell Fine
Atlanta Neighborhood Charter Middle School, Atlanta, Ga.
As
a child, Fine’s household was labeled “chaotic,” and Fine himself “a
behavior problem.” Today, his past struggles motivate him to “build on
the knowledge students bring from home … [and] emphasize meaningful
connections to real-life contexts” in his classroom. In addition to
serving on his school’s diversity committee, Fine makes a point of
building relationships with families. He acknowledges the value of his
students’ home cultures by hosting open forums, town hall meetings and
Socratic seminars. “In my classroom,” says Fine, “inclusion isn’t
limited to celebrating cultural differences… [I provide] spaces for
[students] to express their multiple perspectives.”